Assessing the Performance of Corporate Social Responsibility in Nigerian Universities and Contribution to Development of Host Communities

The objective of Nigerian universities among others, and very important too, is to relate their activities to the social, cultural and economic needs of the people of Nigeria. This presupposes that the Nigerian society expects the universities to continuously adjust curriculum, teaching, and research to meet the needs of society. More than five (5) decades of experiment with university education in Nigeria, many stakeholders, particularly community members where universities are located have expressed disappointment over the seeming poor capacity of universities to perform their corporate social responsibility that raised two research questions and one (1) hypothesis. The population of study comprised all the 64 public universities spread across the six (6) geopolitical zones of the country. A total of six (6) universities representing ten (10) percent of the population constituted the study sample. The universities were stratified according to the six (6) geopolitical zones from which one (1) university each was randomly selected. The North-East geopolitical zone was excluded because of the persisting problem of insurgency perpetuated by the notorious Boko Haram terrorist group. All the officers of the Community Development Associations (CDAs) in the communities where the sampled universities are located serve as respondents for the study. A questionnaire titled: Universities' Performance of Corporate Social Responsibilities Questionnaire (UPERCOSEREQUE) was validated, pilot-tested (r=0.91) and administered on the respondents. The administration of the questionnaire with research assistants nationwide lasted for 8 weeks. Section "A" of the questionnaire collected demographic data while "B" and "C" contained CSR core areas performance and community development indices respectively. Respondents assessed on a 4-point rating scale. Data collected to answer the research questions were descriptively analysed using, means and standard deviation. The result of the analysis revealed among others that the performance of CSR is low. Based on the findings, the study recommended that Nigerian universities should adjust their curriculum, pedagogy, and research to respond to the needs of their host communities